Filling In The Blanks
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy IX or any of its characters.
Chapter 54: Running in Circles
Her friends weren't in sight, but rather, a normal looking hallway with red carpet down the middle, and a stair case on either side of her. Just a little to her right was a mirror hanging on the wall. Curiously, she walked to it, knowing she wouldn't have any back up if she was attacked.
But it was here that she saw her friends, running to her aid almost as if in slow motion. With too much temptation to bear, the young girl pulled the mirror off the wall.
It was only a hand mirror – big enough to fit in her palm, and yet she could see everyone so clearly in it. As her friends raced to the spot where she had gone through, fists met hard glass – there wasn't a way in.
She panicked for a moment, unsure of what to do. Glancing around, her paranoia shot through the roof. "Where am I?" She asked, gazing into the mirror again.
Do not be restricted by your knowledge and experience. This plays turns logic upside down. What's big is small, what's strong is weak, and heaven is earth…
The girl suddenly remembered those words, and narrowed her eyes, staring into the mirror again.
"Heaven is earth…" Though her skepticism was high, she hung with mirror on the wall just as Zidane heaved a push against the window. The moment it was back on the wall, he fell through, half of his body on her side of the window.
"Dagger!" He choked out.
She turned to him and ran, pulling him all the way through. The others followed shortly. "What is this place?" Freya asked, eyes glancing around cautiously.
"I don't know…" She walked back to the mirror and pointed to it, "I could see you… through there!"
"How did you stop us from getting through?" Marcus asked, having walked through just a moment after them. Her cure spell really helped his leg. Almost all the pain was gone – she must have been getting good at her spells.
"I moved the mirror…" She explained simply, but only received looks indicating they all thought she was crazy. She took it down from the wall, even though everyone's first reflex was to jerk forward to stop her. "Go try and get back to the other side of the window…"
Amarant did this, being closest to it, but not being able to. "You're serious, girlie? You aren't doing something?"
She shook her head rapidly, shoulder length hair flying all over. "I swear… It's this mirror…" She held it up, but they all jumped back. "What?!"
"It moved places!"
"What?" She pulled it down and stared at it, and sure enough, it was as though the man behind the camera was moving, and the scene that they saw was in front of wherever his lens went.
"Hey…" Blank narrowed his eyes and pointed forward. "That looks like where we are now!"
But instead of holding on their position, it continued to move forward.
"I think…" Freya furrowed her brows, tipping her hat back so they could see her ice-blue eyes. "I think it wants us to follow."
Amarant scoffed and crossed his arms. "There's no way I'm following a creepy ass mirror…"
But the others ignored him and started to move forward. Freya rolled her eyes at the stubborn man, "Fine… stay here by yourself and get lost without our help."
He glared at her, "I don't need your help."
"Suit yourself." She told him curtly, before moving on ahead with the rest of the group.
Almost in a whining way, the man followed, dragging his large feet along after him. "Stupid blue Bermecian…" he mumbled, glaring at the ground.
Marcus winced every time he walked on his leg. It was healing up fine really, but as he watched Zidane, the blonde's limp more and more evident each time Marcus felt his own, he wondered how Zidane did it. He wondered how the blonde had managed to stay alive through all that torment Kuja unleashed through months upon months of angry build up that someone had escaped his clutches. He pondered how the Genome could want to keep going – let alone smile about it.
Though Marcus was the quickest (physically and intelligently), and everyone had their secret speculations that Blank was the toughest, Cinna was the most tech-savy, Ruby was the most caring, and Baku was their leader… Zidane just had a bit of everything, and kept himself going with the odds against him, still trying to please others.
The thief shook his head… He knew he couldn't do it.
Dagger stopped suddenly, causing everyone to bump together a little bit. He 'oofed' when he ran into the back of the blonde, and he heard the same from Freya when she ran into him.
"Why did you stop?"
"Look…" She traced her fingers delicately over the mirror. "It stopped moving…"
"Are we supposed to turn or something?" Blank asked, running a hand through his red hair. This trip into Ipsen's castle was more irritating and stressful than he originally thought.
"No…" She shook her head when her reflection suddenly appeared in front of her, staring with confusion back at herself. "Look… It's like a normal mirror now…"
She handed it off to Steiner so he could take a look at it. His furrowed eyebrows and stressed eyes stared hauntingly back at him. "She's right."
Dagger rolled her eyes.
"So what now?"
"We keep doing what we've been doing…" Zidane shrugged, "We just keep walking…"
"Greeeat…" Marcus mumbled with an eye roll. He laced his fingers together and placed them on the back of his head, letting his elbows flop down by his ears. "This place is shitty!" He got no answer – just as he expected… which meant everyone agreed.
"Well if we found this mirror, it's different than anything else… Which means we must be at least somewhat on the right track… right?" Zidane glanced at his comrades, who mirrored his uncertainty in their stature.
"Zidane's right… We have to keep moving forward," Beatrix told them, putting her hand on Steiner's shoulder to turn him around, and beckoning to Amarant and Freya, who were at the end of the group.
"Maybe we should split up…" The burly redhead said. All eyes jerked back to him in an instant. He tickled his face with the sharp tip of his claws. "It'll be faster."
"We're all going to get lost and rot in here anyways!" Blank threw up his hands, glaring. "I'd rather do it together than alone!"
"No, I think he might be onto something…" Freya tossed in. She pulled out a vial that most instantly recognized as a potion. She yanked out the cork, and made one tiny drip on the ground.
The ground seemed to absorb it, yet not, and it made a strange, purple spot, like watercolor paint on a wet paper, "Maybe we could retrace our steps back to here…"
"That's crazy!"
"But it might work… We might be able to find something out…"
"How will we know when to come back?"
Steiner rubbed his chin for a moment. "Give it roughly an hour… I mean, if you make it back here before everyone else don't leave, even if people don't come back for a little bit…"
"So what if every other group is dead, and you're just here, chillin', waitin'?" Blank asked, a scowl on his face. "I don't like this idea."
"We should definitely be in small groups…"
"No way. I'm going alone…" Amarant pulled out an antidote and shook the yellow liquid inside. He dropped his first drip defiantly on the ground. "See you in an hour…" He told them, before wandering off.
"I guess it's not really up for debate anymore…" Zidane chuckled at his friend, the redhead's jaw dropped at the man's rude attitude.
"Dagger, with me…" Steiner said protectively. She nodded and pulled out a phoenix down, periwinkle, waving to the others.
"Good luck!" And then they were on their way as well.
"Freya?" Beatrix questioned almost timidly. It seemed the brunette woman didn't like the idea of splitting up any more than Blank.
Freya pulled out a vial of eyedrops, and allowing just a small amount to trickle to the ground. The eyedrops made a deep blue color, and they left without another word.
"I think all three of us should stick together," Blank told Marcus and Zidane. "Since Amarant had to be an asshole and wander off by himself."
"Sounds good to me!" The blonde piped up. Marcus slipped a remedy out of his pouch, and let the forest green color splatter on the ground.
"Let's do this!"
She glanced worriedly at the former knight walking a little ahead of her. His face looked so determined, that for the last half hour, she hadn't wanted to disturb him by uttering a word.
Her heart ached for him, watching as his eyes scanned each area thoroughly. She had been put in charge of splashing phoenix down drops on the ground, but other than that, he hadn't said anything. She wondered what was going through his head – things about his family, and things about where his father could have gone…
The girl didn't know a lot about Steiner. She'd only ever been close to him when they were in the resistance. Steiner was the captain of the Pluto knights, and was her protector when she was in the castle, but she hadn't been old enough to remember. She hadn't known what he was like when he lived an average life in Alexandria. She remembered asking him one time when she was small if he had a girlfriend, and he laughed and said no… Then she inquired him with the question of his family, and his eyes got a little sad, and he hugged her, telling her that she was his family.
But now that she was older, it was more of a bond, than a blood relative sort of thing, and she understood that. She loved Steiner in the way that you love an older brother, or an uncle, but it was hard to imagine him having other members of a family she never knew.
The mirror that Dagger continually clutched in her hand suddenly shot out a fiercely bright light. Her phoenix down clattered to the ground, spilling all over, the vial clinking as it rolled away.
Steiner whipped around immediately, "What was that?!" He demanded.
"I don't know!" The girl told him, "I was just holding it, and it just suddenly –" it did it a second time, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the blinding white.
"So what is happening between you and Steiner?" Freya's question surprised the brunette woman, who stared at her in shock. The Bermecian shrugged nonchalantly, her eyes kept forward on the path ahead of them. "I know I don't normally meddle into those things but… the tension on the way here was quite high…"
She sighed, "I don't know, to be honest…"
"Do you want to talk about it?" Freya asked, wincing. She knew that the only other girl that Beatrix was close to besides the Bermecian was Dagger, but the girl was young and things still came relatively easy to her… Considering both Freya and Fratley were knights, even though she didn't particularly enjoy the topic, she thought maybe she could lend a helping hand.
The woman sighed again, and stopped, turning towards the Bermecian. "Please don't share this information with Dagger… I don't know what she would think."
"My lips are sealed," The woman told her, though a grin played over her face. She felt like they were children exchanging secrets.
"Steiner's older brother is here…"
"What?!" That definitely wasn't something she expected to be part of her problem.
"Back before the war overtook Alexandria…" She was way too embarrassed to stay facing Freya, so turned and cast her eyes out over the balcony that they were currently residing in. "I met Steiner's brother, Nathaniel, and… I don't know… Both of us still lived a relatively normal life – I was a knight of course, but there wasn't a lot of action in the northeast of the Mist Continent from the war yet… And he owned the shop him and his brothers inherited from his lost father…" She shrugged, "Everything was great… But the closer war loomed to us, the more I had to leave, and the more the Rose Brigade was stuck with the Pluto Knights… Steiner and I were closer in age, had more in common, and were more alike… We started to get close…"
She rubbed at her eyes, hoping that Freya wasn't judging her too badly. The Bermecian, in truth, was shocked that the brunette was actually sharing with her. The story wasn't commonly known, and she was curious to see what made their chemistry so strong.
"I was faithful to Nathaniel one-hundred percent, and yet… He started to grow away from me… And finally one day, he told me he couldn't do it anymore, and he left…"
"Just up and left? No other word?" Freya asked her, receiving a silent nod in reply.
"And now seeing him all these years later… Steiner was devastated… He had lost Alexander – his eldest brother – not long before that in a battle in the evil forest… Kuja had bandits waiting for them – it was a total ambush… Steiner watched his brother die, and then watched as the other one abandoned him." She shrugged lightly. "Now seeing that he came here and made a home for himself must be terrible… All three of us are thrown eight years into the past, and I can't help to think about what would have happened between all of us, if Nathan hadn't left…"
Freya was quiet as they continued moving. She could tell that even though she had offered to help, that Beatrix wasn't really looking for an answer – she had just wanted someone to spill her problems too… Someone who wasn't a begrudging Steiner, or Nathaniel, who ran away from all of his problems.
"I'm sorry," she finally said, "But I'm glad that Steiner was there for you…"
"I feel horrible…" She whispered, her usually confident voice so tiny. "I moved from one to the other –"
"That's not fair," Freya cut in right away, "Just because Nathaniel sees it one way, does not mean it went that way. He has an eight year time gap between the two of you – to him… It might seem as though you did go from him to Steiner, solely because he has not been there for all you two have been through. It took you and Steiner roughly eight years to kindle a relationship. It is not fair for him to cast judgment."
"And yet he does."
"You cannot control what others do…" She stopped the woman and turned her around, boring into her eyes. Her long, slender fingers held Beatrix, looking suddenly so frail in front of her, in place. "Do not for a moment believe that you did that, nor did you use Steiner as a back up plan…" The words felt foreign and informal on her tongue, but she had heard Tantalus using such peculiar language, and figured this was an appropriate enough time.
Beatrix let on a small smile. "Thank you…" She whispered.
But before either of them knew it, a gargoyle had ripped off the wall and slammed into the both of them, knocking them over the balcony railing, teeth gnarling and ready to bite.
Amarant skidded across the floor with a grunt. He watched as the rest of his antidote splayed across the floor. He winced as he tried to stand, before one of the bat like veterans clawed at his arms.
"Get away from me!" He grabbed it by the wing and heaved downward. For something so tiny, it had incredibly strength, but eventually, he was able to pull it out of his flight path, and hurl it into the distance.
More and more enemies crawled ominously towards him, and he watched as a tonberry slowly materialized from a wall. He knew he needed to get out of there fast, otherwise he was dead.
He clutched the mirror under his arm, standing on his feet. He cringed as he put pressure on his right foot, but turned curtly around, trying to get back to their starting point… Hopefully, he'd run into someone on the way who could help him fight.
He'd found the strange mirror on the wall, and realized then that he must have traveled the length of the castle. This one was better camouflaged, looking like the wall itself. But as he walked by, his eyes must have been at the perfect angle, the dim rays of sun touching down into the room at the perfect time, because he watched it glint with reflection.
As soon as he'd seen it, he leapt towards it, but was careful not to touch. Working up the courage, he pulled it off the wall, and that's when, just like last time, all of the enemies appeared.
The first wave had been simple. A bright light illuminated from the mirror twice, almost blinding him. But then, enemies continued to come back, ready to defend the mirror. That's when he realized how much trouble he was in. Putting the mirror back on the wall wouldn't even help him now…
"That way!" Blank yelled, ushering them quickly forward through the hall.
Marcus and Zidane slide around the corner, while their redheaded friend brought up the rear. Behind them were more monsters than they could probably count.
"Where the fuck are we going?!" The genome puffed, his eyes wide and his head constantly whipping backwards to check and see how fast the fiends were gaining on them.
"Anywhere but right here!"
All three of them stumbled down the halls, not paying attention to the fact that they were crossing everybody's colors, and not just their own. "We're gonna get lost in here forever!" Blank cried, his breath leaving him in short bursts.
"We're gonna die first if we don't get away from these things!" Marcus yelled at him, ducking under an awkwardly placed archway and into the next room. There were poles and staircases all over, and the three thieves did the first thing that came to mind.
They leapt from the platform and grabbed a hold of the poles as the smaller monsters (the only ones that could fit through the hole) swarmed in. All three took one look at each other, before lifting the grips of their boots from the pole and sliding all the way down.
As soon as they started to pick up speed, they saw the bottom, eyes all widening. "Well, what do we do now?!"
"We're gonna splatter against the ground that's what we're going to do!" Blank yelled.
"You know your pessimistic attitude is a real thrill to spend the last ten seconds of my life with!" Zidane barked at him with a grin.
A bright light enveloped them, and as soon as they opened their eyes again, they were slowly floating towards the ground. Glancing upward, they saw Dagger's worried face peering over the edge of a balcony.
They cheered for her as soon as their feet landed on the ground. And it even appeared that the monsters had stopped following them.
"I hope everyone else is doing alright…" Steiner said from behind the girl. She glanced behind her to stare at his troubled expression.
"I'm sure they're alright… We just have to find everyone…" She nodded, "Something must have happened, otherwise that light wouldn't have appeared…
"We don't know if it was good or bad, Dagger…" He reminded her grimly, "Let's meet Zidane, Marcus, and Blank at the bottom."
The Tantalus members waited up for the two, before they all started walking again.
"If anybody else was attacked like we were, I can guarantee that nobody is going to be back to their spots…"
"I'm worried about Amarant," Zidane confessed with a shrug, "He went off by himself – there was no one to save his ass…"
"Let's look for him first," Dagger suggested with a nod.
It turns out, they didn't have to look very far. An upside down hallway and a staircase away, he was on the ground, groaning.
Immediately, all ran to his aid.
"What happened?" He grumbled lightly.
"You tell us…" Zidane chuckled at him, trying to lighten the mood.
"I was getting swarmed…" He murmured, "Because I picked this damn thing up off the ground! And – and…" He groaned and thumped his head lightly against the ground, "I shouldn't have ran off… Zidane I'm…" He stared at the blonde, "I'm sorry…"
"What's done is done… All that matters is that you're alive…" While everyone fussed over the man down, Dagger gingerly took the piece of glass from him.
"How strange…" She murmured, watching how the mirrors reflected back at each other, but they showed a scene, not just the opposite mirror. It was almost like they were attracted to each other.
She leapt up, glancing at the men behind her, "I think I've got something to go off of…"
"We can't go without Beatrix and Freya!" Steiner insisted.
But Blank and Zidane hopped up after her, ready to go.
"I don't know if we'll have another chance, Steiner…" She glanced at him pleadingly, "What if it stops and we're stuck? There's no way we know where we were going after all those attacks!"
"It's true…" Amarant said, sitting up and wiping the blood off of his lip. She saw this gesture and cast him a weak cure spell. It made him feel better than he thought. "Thanks."
"They'll be alright…" Marcus told him, helping the older redhead up. "We need to start finding what we came looking for, or seeking an exit… With all the monsters in here, we won't last long otherwise."
Steiner sighed, overruled, before dragging himself to his feet. The girl started to run, too much adrenaline running through her body to slow down. They skid around corners and slid up poles, and much to their delight, found dead ends that turned into real passageways with just a little searching.
Finally, they came to a door. It was huge and heavy looking, metal reinforcements running through the oak.
"I can't believe it!" Blank yelped, "It's the first damn door we've seen all day! Let's open it –"
"Wait!" Steiner called, yanking the greedy redhead back. "We cannot advance until we've found Beatrix and Freya." He yelled angrily.
"Then proceed…" Around a corner came the two women, a little beat up looking, but otherwise alright.
"Beatrix!" Steiner rushed forward, wrapping her in a hug. His hands pattered her shoulders and her face to make sure she was okay. It seemed he was too impatient with himself to get a grip, and eventually just settled for pulling her into him, and resting his chin on top of her head, his hand sliding down her chestnut hair.
"Good to see you made it alive," Zidane nodded to Freya, who looked at him with a smirk.
"You as well…" She said back, though her raised eyebrow made the others question if that's what they were talking about or not.
"Are we ready to see what's behind the door?" Amarant asked impatiently, "Or is your love scene not quite over yet?"
The two former knights blushed and pulled apart, walking up to the door. Steiner and Amarant together yanked it open, the heavy wood creaking as it inched open.
Inside was a large room. It seemed to have regular windows, peering out into the mist. There were no façades here… In the center was a large throne, velvet red cushioning it, made of glittering marble and speckled ivory, carved intricately with ancient patterns. Around there were ancient candle sticks on the wall, still lit.
"This room…" Dagger stepped forward, and suddenly felt the presence of a voice in her mind.
The mirror of reveal, and the mirror of conceal… Together, they have extraordinary powers.
"Extraordinary?" The girl parroted in a whisper. With a sudden burst of bravery, she clapped both mirrors together. Instead of shattering on impact like she initially suspected, they merged together molding their shapes until it was one object, not two.
Another blinding light filled the room, snuffing out all the candles and rattling all the windows. Many voices – too many – filled their minds as they squeezed their eyes shut, willing nothing terrible to come out of her choices.
And then, just like that… It was over…
Except…
From every crack and crevice in the throne room – every window, every wall… even the throne in the middle of the room came enemies. Small fiends – one they hadn't previously seen in the castle, and gargoyles molded themselves out of the stone. Bookkeeping agares started to throw things at the group with their minds, and more than a few cerberuses were heading straight towards them. As soon as they turned around, they saw a line of tonberries drearily walking towards them, daggers extended.
"Shit!"
The group burst into the hall again, throwing themselves in the opposite direction of the tonberries, unable to get a good grip on where to go. There were fiends pouring in from everywhere. If they thought the first fight was hard… or maybe even their individual fights… this one was sure to kill them.
"This way!" Zidane told them, running forward, down a hall that had light seeping through a window at the end. He was hoping this window was breakable, and even if they died doing it, they could escape this stony hell.
But only three steps into the hallway, the floor fell out from underneath him, and before he knew it, Zidane was screaming, staring up at Dagger, who had been right on his tail, as she free fell towards the ground along with him.
A/N: I know that wasn't the greatest chapter, but shit! That was hard to write… And not very entertaining I might add… I hope you kind of enjoyed it anyways… I'm really hoping to wrap up Ipsen's Castle next chapter… It sucks! Lol
Leave me your comments and questions :)
-zesty-
